Copious Notes

The University of Kentucky Theatre presents the final weekend of Andrew Kimbrough’s production of Henrik Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House,” which will offer a new spin on how you view Guignol Theatre productions. Literally, Tony Hardin’s set faces the back stage of the Guignol with three rows of seats along the back wall. The primary set consists of an living room where Nora Helmer (Alys Dickerson) watches her idyllic world fall apart in what is widely considered the first feminist play. The set, which includes a jagged wall to peek into the office of Nora’s husband Torvald’s (Chris Floyd) office and an exterior wall that flies in for some scenes and a trapdoor staircase through which characters enter and exit. Nelson Fields costumes complete the Victorian look in the production that also stars Brian Sprague as Nils Krogstad, Abby Sheridan as Kristine Linde and Jeremy Gillett as Dr. Rank.

Quest Community Church's new state-of-the-art 2,400-seat auditorium was built with private funds. Could Lexington arts supporters do something similar?

What do you think of Lexington’s inventory of theaters and other venues for live performances?

Currently, leaving aside our behemoth of Rupp Arena, our major arts and entertainment venues are the Singletary Center for the Arts, which seats about 1,500, and the Lexington Opera House, which accomodates just under 1,000. Then, in the seats-a-few-hundred category, you have the black box theater in the Downtown Arts Center, the Lyric Theatre, which is currently being rennovated, and the Kentucky Theatre. There are also venues such as Studio Players’ Carriage House Theatre and the Lexington Children’s Theatre that are almost exclusively used by the groups that occupy them, and University spaces such as the University of Kentucky’s Guignol Theatre and Transylvania University’s Haggin Auditorium that are primarily used by the institutions.

Am I leaving any Big Kahunas out?

So, is that a good inventory. What do we lack?

Some lament we never got the major performing arts center that was supposed to happen where the courthouses now stand at Main and Limestone. Others say Lexington isn’t ready for a venue of that caliber. Others look at smaller spaces such as the Woodford Theatre’s venue in Falling Springs Arts and Recreation Center and wonder why Lexington couldn’t have something like that for groups that may see the Opera House as too big for their needs.

Still others say creativity trumps venues, and point to places such as Charleston, S.C., that have built vibrant performing arts scenes without an ideal inventory of venues. Here, we have examples such as Balagula Theatre at Natasha’s Bistro and Bar and the chamber music festivals that bookend the summer taking place in  an old tobacco barn at Shaker Village and Fasig-Tipton’s horse sales pavilion showing a creative use of non-traditional spaces in town.

Here’s another fly I’ll throw in the ointment: I just attended a concert last week in a new, state of the art 2,400-seat Lexington venue that would have been the envy of many area arts groups: Quest Community Church’s new sanctuary. If there is a desire for a new theater or theaters in town, do you need to have public funds to build it, or can the arts community come together to make something happen like, oh, Quest or a little baseball park near Broadway and New Circle that was built with private funds.

That’s sort of a distillation of conversations and thoughts I’ve had over the last several years about Lexington’s theater space.

So, what do you think? Hit the comment button and let’s talk.

Allyson Smith as Ma and Zach Moseley as Tom Joad in the University of Kentucky and Bluegrass Community and Technical College theater programs' production of "The Grapes of Wrath." Photo by Rich Copley | LexGo.

Friday morning, NPR’s Morning Edition featured a report about how migrant workers in the United States who had moved up from working in the fields to coveted construction jobs are now having to head back to agricultural work because the building boom has gone bust.

The report ended saying, “But for now, older so-called domestic farm workers and former construction workers will take the jobs — unless things get so bad that U.S. citizens are willing to move across the country for five months’ work in these lettuce fields at $350 a week.”

Friday night, I settled into a seat at the Guignol Theatre to watch a play about U.S. citizens willingly traveling across the country to work the fields for much, much less.

This week, the University of Kentucky and Bluegrass Community and Technical College theater programs opened a joint production of the Depression epic The Grapes of Wrath, which runs through March 1, and no one can accuse them of presenting escapist entertainment.

The Grapes of Wrath is tough to watch or read at any time. A big part of the story’s greatness is how John Steinbeck chronicled some of the worst elements of the Great Depression in aching detail: a family of 12 traveling cross country in an barely road-worthy truck, losing people along the way to death and despair. In the promised land of California, they find thousands more like themselves all at the mercy of bully farm owners and policemen.

You think, “There but for the grace . . . ” and then remember that for the past several months the unemployment rolls have grown in the high-hundreds of thousands monthly, the stock market keeps finding new lows and we keep hearing we’re in the worst economic crisis since — ugh — the Great Depression.

UK and BCTC of course did not plan to be this timely. They aimed to stage an ambitious production with a cast of more than two dozen, some impressive set pieces, and cool video elements. And they planned it when $4 gas was draining our wallets, but we were still months away from the banking collapses of the fall.

Now, Frank Galati’s stage adaptation of Grapes is almost too timely as a vivid portrait of a time we keep hearing about when we turn on the news.

Maybe we need to see this. But maybe what we need most are these words from Ma (played by Allyson Smith), late in the second act: “Don’t you go frettin’. A different time’s coming.”